The Bone Thief (Syd Walker #2), by Vanessa Lillie
In the hours before dawn at a local summer camp, Bureau of Indian Affairs archaeologist Syd Walker receives an alarming call: newly discovered skeletal remains have been stolen. Not only have bones gone missing, but a Native teen girl has disappeared near the camp, and law enforcement dismisses her family's fears.
As Syd investigates both crimes, she's drawn into a world of privileged campers and their wealthy parents—most of them members of the Founders Society, an exclusive club whose members trace their lineage to the first colonists and claim ancestral rights to the land, despite fierce objections from the local tribal community. And it's not the first time something—or someone—has gone missing from the camp.
The deeper Syd digs, the more she realizes these aren't isolated incidents. A pattern of disappearances stretches back generations, all leading to the Founders Society's doorstep. But exposing the truth means confronting not just the town's most powerful families, but also a legacy of violence that refuses to stay buried.
Little Movements, by Lauren Morrow
Thirty-something Layla Smart was raised by her single mother to dream medium. But all Layla’s ever wanted was a career in dance, which requires dreaming big. So when she receives an offer to be the choreographer-in-residence at Briar House in rural Vermont, she temporarily leaves behind Brooklyn, her job, her friends, and her husband to pursue it.
Layla has nine months to navigate a complex institution and teach a career-defining dance to a group of Black dancers in a very small, very white town. She has help from a handsome composer, a neurotic costume designer, a witty communications director, and the austere program director who can only compare Layla to Black choreographers. It's an enormous feat, and that’s before Layla’s marriage buckles under the strain of distance, before Briar House’s problematic past comes to light, and before Layla finds out she's pregnant.
An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love, by Lauren Appelbaum
Mallory Rosen takes her remote tech job seriously. She values routine with predictability and minimum contact with others. So the last thing she wants are any surprises that force her to leave her comfortable Seattle apartment. Surprises like inheriting her late grandmother’s seaside cottage in Florida…with the requirement that she keeps her newly widowed grandfather company.
With no vacation days left, Mal will have to quickly check on her grandfather, sell the cottage, and return to her structured life before her boss even knows she left. But when she gets to Gramp's new independent living community, it’s not so simple. The cottage needs expensive maintenance fixes with a much too charming property manager. Her grandfather constantly interrupts her Zoom meetings. The WiFi drops at the absolute worst times. It all feels too much like déjà vu—the kind that reminds her of when she was fired from her last remote job and was forced to live with her parents.
But right when she’s about to call it quits, she starts making friends at the senior citizen yoga, getting to know Gramps as a person (rather than just a stubborn boomer), and exploring the tight-knit small town. It doesn’t help that she keeps running into her hot property manager who seems to know everyone. Just when she finally feels alive, connected to others, and like she has a chance at love, she gets the (almost) worst notice All employees must return to the office.
Hollow Spaces by Victor Suthammanont
Thirty years ago, John Lo, the only Asian American partner at a prestigious New York City law firm, was acquitted of the murder of an employee he was having an affair with. The repercussions of that long-ago event still haunt his adult children. Brennan, a lawyer following in her father’s footsteps in more ways than one, has always maintained that the trial got it right. Hunter, a disgruntled war correspondent whose similarities to his father run more than skin-deep, believes their father got away with murder. Their convictions have pushed them apart. Now, spurred on by their mother’s failing health, the estranged siblings decide to reconcile their differences by reinvestigating the murder to come to a definitive conclusion, and, in the process, salvage what’s left of their fragmented family.
Told in a dual timeline that moves between John’s perspective thirty years prior and Brennan and Hunter’s present-day investigation, Hollow Spaces is a moving portrait of a flawed man’s shocking fall from grace and a gripping exploration of race in corporate America, filial loyalty, ambition, and the fallout of a sensational trial for those caught in its wake.
A Philosophy of Thieves (The Canarvier Files #1), by Fran Wilde
The Canarviers are the premier performance thieves in New Washington, blending astonishing acrobatics, clever misdirection, and daring escapes to entertain their rich patrons. As King Canarvier has always told his children, their work is art. Who else could titillate audiences with illicit history lessons and tease them through the gaps in their much-prized security?
Now that they’re adults, King’s children feel their divisions more than their bonds. Roosa attends an exclusive finishing university, blending in so well she’s unsure where she belongs. Her brother Dax craves a chance to prove himself, stifling under his father’s caution.
Then King disappears.
With only days to buy mercy before their father is lost forever, Roo and Dax must compete in a high-stakes Grand Heist, pushing down their resentments to work together. Against a technocrat wagering more than he can lose, a security chief with a taste for pain, and a society beauty with secrets of her own, any misstep promises catastrophic ruin.
But Canarviers are artists. And they perform best when the pressure is on . . .
Life, and Death, and Giants, Ron Rindo
Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world.
But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens next transforms not only Gabriel’s life but the lives of everyone he meets.
I Want You to Be Happy: Finding Peace and Abundance in Everyday Life, by Pope Francis
In this new book, which quickly became his biggest bestseller in many years in Italy when it was published in 2022, Pope Francis shares wisdom and encouragement to help readers seek God's will and His best. The short, accessible chapters allow distill the message into bite-sized readings, and can be read all at once or in daily segments.
This collection of inspiring pieces will encourage, inspire, and remind all readers that God cares and wants to live and love well.
The Roma: A Traveling History, by Madeline Potter
The Roma is a profoundly personal portrait of a people and their on-going journey, shedding new light on their history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today. It is a history that is not widely known and understood, and that invisibility has created a space where fear and hostility continue to thrive.
Full of fascinating stories and extraordinary individuals, The Roma is a powerful corrective to the stereotyping and prejudices still faced by Romani communities. We meet the Romani artist who chronicled her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria; the boxer who should have become Germany’s light-heavyweight champion only to have his win scratched from the record by the Nazis; and a eighteenth-century Romani woman in London who was accused of kidnapping a girl and sentenced to death only to be exonerated thanks to some detective work by an unconvinced judge.
Throughout, Madeline Potter weaves in her travels though contemporary Romani Europe as well as strands of her own journey as a Romani woman in Romania and now in Britain. Deftly blending explorative history and portraits of a unique and vibrant culture with intimate accounts of racism, The Roma is a celebration of survival – of resilience and resistance in the face of prejudice and persecution.
Looking back on her remarkable career, Retired Army Colonel Edna W. Cummings can justly say that “the odds ain’t good, but good stuff happens.” Her story is as inspiring as it is improbable, but her memoir is about much more than herself. Chronicling Cummings’s unlikely but successful path to leadership roles in the army and afterward, it also tells the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion—known as the Six Triple Eight—a trailblazing African American World War II Women’s Army Corps unit now the subject of a Netflix film and a Broadway-bound musical — and the grassroots campaign Cummings led to honor them.
In 2022, due in large part to Cummings’s efforts, the Six Triple Eight was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor—the Congressional Gold Medal. Among the fewer than two hundred recipients, including the crew of Apollo 11 and the Navajo Code Talkers, the Six Triple Eight is the only women’s unit to receive this prestigious decoration. In A Soldier’s Life Colonel Cummings narrates her path from childhood to advocate and how she overcame incredible odds not only for herself but on behalf of those who had come before her.
My Next Breath, by Jeremy Renner
Two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner was the second most googled person in 2023… and not for his impressive filmography. His searing portrayals on film ranged from an Iraq-based army bomb technician in The Hurt Locker and a Boston bank robber in The Town to a crooked Camden mayor in American Hustle before he became heir to the Jason Bourne franchise (The Bourne Legacy). Amongst other iconic roles, he also captured hearts as fan-favorite comic book marksman Hawkeye in seven Marvel films.
Yet, his otherworldly success on-screen faded to the periphery when a fourteen-thousand-pound snowplow crushed him on New Year’s Day 2023. Somehow able to keep breathing for more than half an hour, he was subsequently rushed to the ICU, after which he would face multiple surgeries and months of painful rehabilitation.
In this debut memoir, Jeremy writes in blistering detail about his accident and the aftermath. This retelling is not merely a gruesome account of what happened to him; it’s a call to action and a forged companionship between reader and author as Jeremy recounts his recovery journey and reflects on the impact of his suffering. Ultimately, Jeremy’s memoir is a testament to the human spirit and its capacity to endure, evolve, and find purpose in the face of unimaginable adversity. His writing captures the essence of profound transformation, exploring the delicate interplay between vulnerability and strength, despair and hope, redemption and renewal.
This Happened to Me: A Reckoning, by Kate Price
Kate Price grew up in a small mill town in central Pennsylvania with her sister and parents in northern Appalachia. At the insistence of her mother, and through her academic accomplishments, Price escaped the unbroken cycles of poverty, violence, addiction, mental illness, and abuse that had plagued her family for generations. She started a new life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in pursuit of her master’s and PhD. But despite having left this dark world behind, it still kept a firm grip on her.
Overcome with unexplainable grief and sadness and having sustained a series of hazy flashbacks accompanied by a “chilling of her blood and uncomfortable feeling in her bones,” Price sought out Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma specialist to help heal her constant emotional pain through EMDR therapy. He went on to write the bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score, which features Price's story, as the two worked together to find out about her past. When Price, whose brain had been protecting her by shutting out these horrific memories, felt safe enough, she along with van der Kolk as her guide, discovered what that darkness that lay within her was. Her father had abused and trafficked her as a child.
Price grappled with what had been revealed. Did this really happen to her? How could a parent do this to a child? A dedicated researcher and academic, she knew she needed confirmation, proof that what she had remembered had happened. And so began a 10-year quest alongside a journalist, to prove what Price knew to be her truth. With many trips back to the hometown she thought she had left forever, the two eventually found the hard-earned evidence Price had been searching for.
In this exquisitely rendered, transformative memoir, Price describes how she broke free of that which had defined her childhood and went on to create a purpose-driven life and family, on her own terms. Eventually returning to the same Appalachian community to use her education and advocacy to help ensure children are given the attention, protection, and services that she never received.
From victim to advocate, from fearful child to empowered adult, and from despair to triumph, This Happened to Me is a story of astonishing resilience and breathtaking determination.
Sexy Selfie Nation: Standing Up for Yourself in Today's Toxic, Sexist Culture, by Leora Tanenbaum
Beginning in childhood, women are relentlessly sexualized against their will. This sexualization occurs with gendered school dress codes, which allow teachers and administrators to scrutinize and comment on girls’ bodies; nonconsensual sharing of intimate images (“revenge porn” and “deepfakes”), which portray girls and women as sexual objects deserving of public humiliation; and the aftermath of sexual harassment and assault, when victims are told—still today, even after #MeToo—that they were “asking for it.”
In Sexy Selfie Nation, Tanenbaum speaks directly to young women about why they’ve chosen to sexualize their appearance as a method of standing up for themselves and taking control over their bodily autonomy. Tanenbaum demonstrates that above all, “sexy” does not mean “inviting sex,” and that when young women embrace a sexualized aesthetic or post sexy photographs, they do so on their own terms. Their gestures have consequences both positive and negative—for themselves and others— so while their actions may be fulfilling, they also exact a cost.
When they married Emperors Franz Joseph and Napoleon III, respectively, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France became two of the most famous women on the planet. Not only were they both young and beautiful—becoming cultural and fashion icons of their time—but they played a pivotal role in ruling their realms during a tempestuous era characterized by unprecedented political and technological change.
Fearless, adventurous, and independent, Elisabeth and Eugénie represented a new kind of empress—one who rebelled against tradition and anticipated and embraced modern values. Yet both women endured hardship in their private and public lives. Elisabeth was plagued by a mother-in-law who snatched her infant children away and undermined her authority at court. Eugénie’s husband was an infamous philanderer who could not match the military prowess of his namesake. Between them, Elisabeth and Eugénie were personally involved in every major international confrontation in their turbulent century, which witnessed thrilling technological advances, as well as revolutions, assassinations, and wars.
With her characteristic in-depth research and jump-off-the-page writing, Nancy Goldstone brings to life these two remarkable women, as Europe goes through the convulsions that led up to the international landscape we recognize today.
From the mighty pyramids of Egypt to the majestic temples of the Aztec, we have a good idea of what the past looked like. But what about our other senses: The tang of Roman fish sauce, and the springy crust of Egyptian sourdough? The boom of medieval cannons and clash of Viking swords? The breathless plays of an Aztec ballgame, and the chilling reality that the losers might also lose their lives?
History all too often neglects the tastes, textures, sounds, and smells that were an intimate part of our ancestors’ daily experience, but a new generation of researchers is resurrecting those hidden details, pioneering an exciting new discipline called experimental archaeology. These are scientists gone rogue: They make human mummies. They carve ancient spears and go hunting, then knap their own obsidian blades to skin the game. They build perilous boats and plunge out onto the open sea—all in the name of experiencing history as it was, with all its dangers, disappointments, and unexpected delights.
Beloved author Sam Kean joins these experimental archeologists on their adventures as they resurrect the lives of our ancestors, following in their footsteps at exotic locations across the globe, from remote Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes. He fires medieval catapults, tries his hand at ancient surgery and tattooing, builds Roman-style roads—and, in novelistic interludes, spins tales of the lives of people long gone with vivid imagination and his signature meticulous research. Lively, offbeat, and filled with stunning discoveries, Dinner with King Tut sheds light on days long past and the intrepid experts resurrecting them today, with startling, lifelike detail and more than a few laughs along the way.
In 1940, on its way to conquering Western Europe, Germany coerced the Danish government into a “cooperative” agreement that lasted three long years until the increasing brazenness of the Resistance movement prompted a crackdown. Denmark’s nearly 8000 Jews, who had so far been spared Hitler’s wrath, now became the focus of his rage. A roundup was ordered to begin on October 1st, 1943, the first day of the Jewish New Year.
The only passage to safety was across the Oresund to Sweden. But no group existed to organize an escape. Until the last moment, Sweden didn’t agree to allow the refugees into the country; and the strait between the two nations was swarming with Gestapo.
What happened next was a miracle.
95% of Denmark’s Jews survived the Holocaust, the highest percentage in Europe. Here are the riveting true accounts of ordinary Danes who, using their modest resources, wiles, remarkable courage, and camaraderie, quietly orchestrated their escape.
Among them were Jorgen Kieler and his siblings, student activists galvanized by their sense that their government hadn’t done enough to prevent the German takeover . . . Henny Sinding, the legendary “Girl in the Red Hat” . . . David Sampolinsky, an Orthodox Jew who teamed with a Lutheran school teacher to escort hundreds to safety . . . Niels Bohr, the world-famous nuclear physicist being rushed to help Oppenheimer build the bomb at Los Alamos, who paused on his way to safety to implore the King of Sweden to allow Danish refugees into his country.
A work of World War II history that reads like a thriller, this inspiring chronicle examines why, unlike the rest of Western Europe, these accomplishments were so uniquely managed by the Danish people, even in the face of Nazi occupation and Hitler’s growing fixation on the Final Solution.